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Afghanistan is in flames. The Taliban are resurgent. The opium economy provides livelihoods for millions of Afghans. And now, US drug czar John Walters announces over the weekend, that Afghanistan will begin spraying the poppy fields with glyphosate, the same stuff we've been using with such great success in Colombia against the coca crops. (After six years of Plan Colombia spraying, the coca crop in Colombia is about the same size it was when we started.)

The DEA has been found guilty of retaliating against an agent who exposed misconduct. Basically they committed a crime in order to send a message to their employees about not exposing their other crimes.

From MiamiHerald.com:

A federal jury in Miami found the Drug Enforcement Administration discriminated against Sandalio Gonzalez, the former second-in-command of the DEA's South Florida field office, by retaliating against him with a transfer to another job in Texas in 2001.

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For Gonzalez -- who stirred controversy in 2000 when he blew the whistle on a Miami drug bust in which 10 kilos of cocaine went missing -- the court triumph was sweet vindication. He had stood up for not only himself, but also other Hispanic and black DEA agents in the Miami field office over issues of discrimination, his lawyers said.

But wait…that name sounds familiar. Isn't Sandalio Gonzalez the same DEA agent who was forced into early retirement after exposing DOJ culpability in the "House of Death" murders in Mexico? Apparently yes.

So as I understand it, Gonzalez first blew the whistle in Miami when his colleagues stole 10 kilos of cocaine and tried to cover it up. He was then involuntarily transferred to Texas, where he blew the whistle when his colleagues allowed a government informant to commit multiple gruesome murders in Mexico. Having had about enough of him, the DEA again retaliated, forcing Gonzalez into early retirement.